I’m on the show floor this week at SIGGRAPH, and I’m seeing some really exciting technology.

SIGGRAPH is the annual computer graphics and animation conference, taking place this year in Vancouver, British Columbia. It’s really a playground for animators, digital artists, interactive experience designers, motion graphics designers, and video producers—and I want to share with you what I’m seeing here.

Now in addition to keeping you up to date on weekly course releases and features like Deke’s Techniques and DSLR Video Tips, you’ll find how-to articles, first-person insights, and member success stories. The Article Center is a learning resource in itself—and the new name reflects this focus.

One of the many benefits of working at lynda.com is the beauty and elegance of our Carpinteria headquarters, providing us not just an efficient, streamlined, and Green Business-certified workplace, but a constant source of visual inspiration as well. “A great workspace should be more than just comfortable for those who use it,” says founder Lynda Weinman. “High-quality surroundings should reflect and inspire a high-quality product—and that’s our hope for the facilities here at lynda.com.”

We’re proud to share these pictures of our facilities and show you where the inspiration, expertise, and hard work behind our courses originate. Interested in joining the lynda.com team yourself and seeing our offices in person? Be sure to check out our job listings.

A few months behind schedule, version 3.6 of WordPress is out and ready for you to make the most of. The scope of changes in this release are relatively minor, but the updates are important and will help in your day-to-day work with WordPress. Here’s what’s new and why it matters to you.

Twenty Thirteen: The new theme standard

Since 2010, a new default theme has been released every year, and this year is no different. With 3.6 comes Twenty Thirteen. While the previous three themes—Twenty Ten, Twenty Eleven, and Twenty Twelve—got progressively simpler, Twenty Thirteen goes in a new design direction. It’s aggressively blog-centric with a heavy focus on Post Formats, and it’s a great example of the popular flat design trend currently sweeping the web.

Post Formats are a new feature in WordPress 3.6 that lets you choose unique layout and design templates for specific types of blog posts, such as images, videos, quotes, and regular articles, among others. The Twenty Thirteen theme supports Post Formats by providing a bold, unique visual style for each post so your site visitors can differentiate between the content in each one. In the image above you see the Video, Quote, Status, and Chat post formats on the front page. The Standard post format has a white background. The post format styling is also carried over into the post editor so as you change your post format you’ll see the styling change as you work, and the post formats are now identified using icons throughout the dashboard.

With a variety of courses published each week at lynda.com, it’s easy to get distracted. So we’re pleased to take a moment to glance up from our busy release schedule to celebrate a significant milestone: lynda.com has just published its 2,000th course.

To put this in perspective, in April 2011 lynda.com featured 1,000 courses, which means we’ve now doubled our library in just over two years. From the initial concepts of a course, to screenwriting, to the production, camerawork, and editing of each individual video, 2,000 courses adds up to years of production time: no small feat.

Watch videos that explain how to find things and use features on the lynda.com Partners site.

Click on the icon on any page for quick answers and helpful tips.

The program itself hasn’t changed; your existing campaigns and commission structure are the same as ever. But we hope the new site improves your experience as a lynda.com partner.

Keep an eye out for Partner Program newsletters and watch the News + updates section of the lynda.com Partners site for program updates, tips on how to be a successful partner, and limited-time special offers.

Since we began working with affiliates in 2009, we have seen fantastic growth in sign-ups, clicks, and sales. It’s been wonderful partnering with you to introduce lynda.com to others, and to reward you in the process.